Judge: Does US law allow feds to compel Apple to unlock an iPhone?

On Tuesday, a New York federal judge told Apple that he is not happy with the company’s response as to whether an law originally written in 1789 applies in a 21st century context. Or put another way, can American la force Apple to hand the government the keys to locked a iPhone?

In its filing one day earlier, Apple lawyers told a federal judge in New York that it’s "impossible" for the company to help unlock an iOS 8 iPhone in a hypothetical criminal case. In this case, however, Apple noted the phone in question here is running iOS 7 (just 10 percent of current iOS devices), which changes the calculus a little bit.

"As a general matter, however, certain user-generated active files on an iOS device that are contained in Apple’s native apps can be extracted," Ken Dreifach, an attorney representing Apple, wrote in the company’s seven-page filing. "Apple cannot, however, extract e-mail, calendar entries, or any third-party app data."